


ritual of the nothing (that the night makes of me)

by justapigeon



Series: Tales of the Modern AU [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Bending (Avatar), Angst, Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Azula (Avatar)-centric, Crying, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Modern AU, Vent Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:26:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25646533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justapigeon/pseuds/justapigeon
Summary: "Crying is a natural response humans have to a range of emotions, Azula."The therapist Zuzu had made her go to, a week After - that is, after Father ended up in prison and her dum-dum of a brother became her legal guardian -, had said that almost at every session."There is no shame in it."
Series: Tales of the Modern AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846216
Comments: 9
Kudos: 51





	ritual of the nothing (that the night makes of me)

**Author's Note:**

> This on: my headcanon that after Azula begins therapy and actually has to face her emotions instead of bottling them up she becomes a crier. She's repressed her emotions for so long that now they sometimes are just too much.  
> (I'm not self-projecting of course what do you mean???)

The wooden floor creaks under her bare feet, fills the silence of the dark emptiness of her room.  


Azula doesn't need the light to know where her desk is and where the pommel of the right drawer is – that room in the girls’ dorm has been her home for years and she knows every crevice and corner and piece of furniture in it –.  


The drawer opens with the slightest squeak. Azula reaches for the tissue box with clinical precision.  


She takes two, folds them neatly into squares, goes back to her bed.  


Places the white cellulose squares on the nightstand, over a copy of "Chronicles of Fire Lord Lian" with a cracked spine. Lays down over the covers.  


It's always better to be prepared for the... most inconvenient consequence of her therapy sessions – a stupid idea Uncle had had and Zuzu had agreed on after getting her custody –.  


In the next room, somebody laughs with her roommate. The sound is shrill and revolting and it resonates through the nothing that night makes of the world.  


Azula fiddles with the top button of her pyjamas’ shirt for a moment, then decides to unfasten it. The silk of her pyjamas is cool under her fingertips.  


Father had made a hefty donation for her to be given a room of her own.  
Roommates could have distracted her. She was not there to make friends, she was there to study, she was there to excel.  


– She'd made friends anyway, she's made friends and clutched them close to her chest because she wasn't sure she could make some again, if Father took them away like he always took away things that were unneeded –  


Azula didn’t want Father to take away her friends, even in they were unneeded, even if they were distractions.  


– Father did what he did because he loved her, though, didn’t he? He just wanted her to be successful and focused –  


A glass bowl and a dead goldfish. Red-orange stillness.  


Azula takes in a sharp breath and knows it’ll start anytime now.  


It’s been building up for the whole week. It rides up her throat the same way bile does – she remembers how bile feels like, one of the many distasteful consequences of the gastric ulcer the court case had brought about –.  


But there is no Ty Lee to hold up her hair and no medicine Mai has to remind her to take. And though bile burns, that it's a pain Azula is used to.  
The endless torture of a crying fit that builds up is far worse. It's a scream that pushes up her throat and then stops and chokes her. She’d choose the burn of bile than this slow death by asphyxiation.  


Until. At some point. After sometime that might be a minute as well as an hour.  
The weight is lifted, the noose cut, the dam opens.  


Azula cries.  


Tears burn against her skin, leave the taste of salt on her lips, stain the silk of her pyjamas. They come and come and come and seem to never stop and Azula braces herself against the pillow and suffocates the sobs.  


– She cries with the shaking reverence that is due to thunderstorms in the endless summer season. –  


There's something ritual in the occurrence of that inconvenient consequence, something sacred, almost. Tears might not burn her throat but they burn like purifying fire.  


And then, as it always does, the crying stops.  


– Even the thunderstorms can’t go on forever. –  


Azula sits up, feeling dizzy as she always does. Her hands are shaking as they fumble for the tissues she prepared.  


– The rain leaves fallen trees and ruined crops in its wake. The rivers flood and the streets turn to mud. –  


Azula balls up the used tissues and sets them back down on the nightstand, carefully far from "Chronicles of Fire Lord Lian".  


She lays back down on the still made bed. The summer air is hazy and still.  
Her eyes drink in the endless blackness hanging above her.  


She’d like to open the window, but she can’t move. Somebody took what the crying let out and compressed it into a pillar and now the pillar is crushing her.  


Azula closes her eyes, she feels so very tired.  


The nothing that night makes of the world engulfs her.  


**Author's Note:**

> Ok so. I wrote this last night because sometimes you get scared at how methodic preparing for a crying fit you know will come when you go to sleep is. And sometimes you just need to write something to cry about so you won't feel like you're crying just because life is too much.  
> And here is this... thing. I want to hug my baby Azula.  
> I should have spent this morning working on another update of Tales of the Modern AU that focuses on Azula and Sokka but. I spent it polishing this.  
> You can find me on tumblr at just-apigeon by the way!


End file.
